TOKYO, April 22 (Reuters) - Boeing Co on Monday began installing reinforced lithium ion batteries on five grounded 787 jets owned by launch customer All Nippon Airways, starting a process that should make the first commercial Dreamliners ready to fly again in about a week.

Teams of Boeing engineers are working on the ANA jets at four airports in Japan, including Tokyo's Haneda and Narita hubs, Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for the carrier said.

The Dreamliners have been parked since regulators in the United States and elsewhere ordered all 50 planes out of the skies in mid-January after batteries on two of them overheated.

ANA is the world's biggest operator of the carbon-composite aircraft with 17 of the planes. After ANA, the biggest 787 operator is local rival Japan Airlines Co with seven jets, followed by United Continental Holdings Inc's United Airlines and Air India with six each.

ANA plans about 100 to 200 round trip test flights in May of its repaired aircraft before carrying passengers again from June, sources knowledgeable about ANA's operations told Reuters last week. The flights will check the safety of the aircraft, and allow ANA's 180 Dreamliner pilots to get accustomed to flying it again and renew their licenses after more than a three-month break.

ANA has not said how much the 787's grounding has cost it to date, though it has said it lost about $900,000 in revenue per plane in the last two weeks of January. The grounding has cost Boeing an estimated $600 million.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the U.S. on Friday approved a Boeing plan to encase the 787s lithium ion batteries in steel box, install new battery charges, and add a duct to vent gases directly outside the aircraft that could cause overheating.

Investigators in the United States and Japan have yet to unravel what caused a 787 battery onboard an ANA jet in Japan and one on another JAL Dreamliner parked at Boston's Logan Airport to overheat.

Well, they did not fix the problem at its root so further testing will occour on the battle field. Anyways no one has yet died as a direct consequence of a battery fire, so we can assume they are safe.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have to announce that we have a small problem with our molten lithium salts electricity plant. The power plant has been safely shut down, is contained and venting is in progress. I apologize for the inconvenient, but harmless smell. So, please don't be disturbed by baseless health worries. Enjoy your flight!

The cause of internal short circuits in all lithium-ion batteries is the ingression of the air pollutant formaldehyde and water vapour into the battery, as air pressure increases. On standing,as the temperature inside the battery drops to the dew point,liquid water forms and the formaldehyde then polymerises to form an electrically conducting strand of polymer between opposite charged terminals - hence voltage drops to zero and thermal runaway commences. But who wants to check out this scenario?

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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